Page 202 - madame-bovary

horns.
The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first
floor of the town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets,
and the drummer of the battalion carried a basket with
bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe’s arm; he saw her
home; they separated at her door; then he walked about
alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the
banquet.
The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so
crowded that they could hardly move their elbows; and the
narrow planks used for forms almost broke down under
their weight. They ate hugely. Each one stuffed himself on
his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish
steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning,
floated above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodol-
phe, leaning against the calico of the tent was thinking so
earnestly of Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him on
the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates, his
neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they
filled his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite
of the growing noise. He was dreaming of what she had said,
of the line of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone
on the plates of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along
the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before
him in the vistas of the future.
He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks,
but she was with her husband, Madame Homais, and the
druggist, who was worrying about the danger of stray rock-
ets, and every moment he left the company to go and give

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